- published: 18 Jan 2016
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Ahmed Ezz (born in 1959) is an Egyptian businessman and one-time politician, the owner of Ezz Steel and the former chairman of Egypt's national assembly's budget committee. He is also a former senior member of the ruling National Democratic Party of Egypt (NDP) and has been described as "a confidant of the president’s son Gamal Mubarak, and two other former ministers."
In 1982, Ezz graduated from Cairo University with a degree in Civil Engineering. He has been elected twice as the head of the Iron and Steel Arab Union. Prior to his work in organized labor, Ezz was a parliamentary member representing the districts of Sadat-Monouf-Sers al-Liyan from Monofuyia from the year 2000 to 2011, and also the Chairman of the Planning and Budget Committee of the People's Assembly of Egypt as a member of the National Democratic Party. (According to Al Jazeera, he resigned from the NDP on 29 January 2011.)
Prior to the revolution, opposition parties, other parliamentarians, and groups accused Ezz of monopolizing the steel industry in Egypt by holding more than 60 percent of the market share, describing it as an act that is backed up by the government when the dominant share of monopoly was raised from 35 percent to 65 percent, an act that was described by the active parliamentarian Aboul Ezz Al Hariri as "enhancing the proliferation of monopolies rather than fighting them". The groups mentioned are even blaming him of increasing the steel prices of as much as 70 percent. In response Ezz has told reporters that a competition law "would at least provide a legal framework preventing everyone from making accusations".